By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
sc94597 on 17 January 2025
Edit Thread
bonzobanana said:
sc94597 said:

So 400-600 Gflops would imply clock speeds of 130-195 Mhz if the Switch 2 has a T239. 

Ampere chips idle at about 210 Mhz. The lowest active power-state clock rate of any Ampere chip is the RTX  a2000 at 562Mhz. 

According to the SDK leak from a few days ago the Switch 2 is at 561 Mhz in handheld mode and 1007.25Mhz in docked mode.

That'd align with the a2000 having a 562 Mhz base clock. 

So unless the Switch 2 isn't using a T239, but a smaller chip with fewer cores (very unlikely) flops as low as you're suggesting aren't possible. 400Gflops-600Gflops at single-precision would imply sub-idle frequencies, and nearly half of what the Switch 1 was able to achieve in its lowest handheld mode setting on the Maxwell architecture. GPU's have minimum voltages (and therefore frequencies) that they have to be at to even work properly. 

I'm thinking well under 1000 Cuda Cores maybe 700-800 I really don't think the Switch 2 will just have a stock T239 and doesn't even that have variable Cuda cores maybe related to yields. Why do you think its very unlikely it will have less cores? It's a small chip and its going to need extra space for Switch compatibility, encryption routines, uncompressing and compressing functionality and other logic Nintendo wants in that chip. Maybe development kits had full T239 chipsets but I suspect the final retail model will be very cut down in comparison. However I'll admit I'm only guessing based on Nintendo's past behaviour. Also that glimpse of Mariokart has been analysed and its not that impressive visually. Yes I know you can't base anything on that glimpse of the game but presumably Nintendo believes that is close to the product that will be shipped. I would expect much more from a 3 Teraflop games console. However I don't want to be Mr Negative in this thread and I still think it will be an amazing console but yes I'm pegging the performance right at the lowest end of expectations.

The T239 is a custom chip designed specifically for the Switch 2. I very much doubt they're going to have dev kits with 12SM (and design a chip around having that many cores) and reduce the real core-count by half. That would make it very hard for developers to optimize their games given that the real chips only have half the performance. It would also be a waste of R&D on Nvidia and Nintendo's part. 

Why do I think the 1,536 core-count (12SM) is accurate?

  • The T239 is a custom design for the Switch 2. It is not designed for anything else. 

  • It's been confirmed through multiple leaks, including the Nvidia leak, but multiple times afterwards. To the point that the likes of Digital Foundry/Eurogamer treat it as all but confirmed. 
  • The GPU clock rates make sense, given the core-count/SMs (they match peak efficiency for handheld mode and aren't too inefficient for docked mode.) 

  • A 1.7 TFLOP Handheld/3.1 TFLOP Docked chip isn't that powerful. It is roughly the mid-end of current gaming PC-handhelds and would be towards the lower-end when Switch 2 releases (we'll have Z2E chips in a hypothetical Rog Ally 2 by then.) That makes sense given that the original Switch fit that same performance slot, or even exceeded it when it released. 

I wouldn't be surprised if Mario Kart 9 (or whatever it is called) is cross-gen so I wouldn't base much off of it, but even if it weren't Mario Kart games haven't been top-of-the-line in terms of graphics for a system since the Gamecube or NDS.